First Brentwood Bank, built in 1925, at 8825 Manchester Road. This building has been renovated many times.

Original Brentwood Community Center, at 2443 Annalee Ave. The house, built in 1920, is now a private residence

Brentwood Lanes, built in 1954.

The Brentwood Theatre at 2525 Brentwood Blvd., currently the home of The Refind Room. This building was built in 1939. The movie “Dark Mirror” came out in 1946.

Chris Ruehl General Store was located on Brentwood Blvd, south of Manchester Road. This picture was taken around 1900. Ruehl and his wife were the children of German immigrants.

Brentwood City Hall (1940’s)

Flooding on Manchester Road, at Dorothy Ave., looking east. This picture was taken in the 1950’s.

In the mid 1970’s, Memorial Park, then called Buder Park was remodeled. A large fire pit was located where the current day pavilion stands.

Aerial picture of the construction of the Brentwood Rec Center in 1975.

Back in the 1960-1970’s, the City would flood the area now occupied by Broughton Park for public skating.

Thomas Madden quarry. Located in the area of the current Ace Hardware on Manchester Road. The kids at St Mary Magdalen school, across the street, said the building would shake when the quarry would blast rock. The quarry shut down and became the town dump for many years. A lot of Brentwood history buried in that hole.

Highway 40/64 looking east, at McKnight Road overpass. The highway ends at the barricades just before Brentwood Blvd. This picture is late 1950’s.

3 thoughts on “Rec Center features historical photos”

Great photos, I was really happy to see the one about highway 40. As a very small child I remember a man coming to the door and asking my Father if he wanted some of the dirt from the highway construction. We did take some for our back yard. One neighbor had a retaining wall put up and had their yard leveled. The homes on our block of Bellevue had large hilly back yards. I always wondered what year that was, must have been early 60’s.

Spoke to Eric in the Parks and Rec department for Brentwood. Captions for each of the photographs have already been ordered. I agree they will enhance the impact of the great photographs. What a terrific idea to preserve at least a little of Brentwood’s history! David Plufka

In Case You Missed It

Many of the readers of 40 South News will be familiar with my blog about the history of Maplewood, Missouri from my previous posts on other sites. Since this is my first blog post for 40 South News I’ve decided to start with the earliest information regarding Maplewood.